The US Army has concluded that Iran was the only victor of the eight-year US campaign to remove Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and replace him with a democratic regime.
I haven't read the massive two-volume set (volumes one and two) yet. But I find the conclusion that Iran won the Iraq War ridiculous.
So Iraq's Kurds didn't win by getting rid of a regime that gassed them?
Iraq's own people in general didn't win by getting rid of a regime that considered running dissidents through plastic shredders a good idea?
Kuwait didn't win by getting rid of a regime that considered Kuwait Iraq's 19th province?
We and the entire region didn't win by getting rid of a WMD-seeking regime with massive oil wealth which sponsored terrorism?
Further, revolutionary Iran had influence in Sunni Arab minority-ruled Iraq via the oppressed Shia majority long before we defeated Saddam in 2003. That is one of the reasons Saddam invaded Iran in 1980:
The war that we view in retrospect as a disastrous and costly war was conceived by Saddam Hussein as a limited conflict against a fragile Iran. In addition to gaining vengeance against a once powerful Iran which had humiliated Iraq by forcing a border settlement favorable to Iran in 1975, Hussein sought to propel Iraq to a position of leadership. Most narrowly, by defeating Iran it would be possible for Iraq to claim leadership of the Gulf region. With Egypt then ostracized by the Arab world for signing the Camp David peace accords with Israel, the demonstration of Iraqi power against the Persians could vault Iraq to leadership of the Arab world as well. Finally, only two years prior to Iraq's hosting of a major nonaligned nations conference, the elevation of Iraq through a victorious war could even make the nonaligned nations look to Iraq for leadership. The disorder caused by the Iranian revolution seemed to make all this possible in addition to allowing Iraq to capture Khuzestan and to humiliate Iran and nullify Iran's ability to subvert Iraq at only a nominal price. Saddam Hussein's plan did not work for the simple reason that Iran did not carry out its role of victim when struck by Iraq. [emphasis added, and note this is a summary of a book manuscript so I didn't dwell on the subversion angle]
Indeed, Saddam was worried his largely Shia soldiers wouldn't fight for him against revolutionary Shia Iran.
Further, by claiming the Iraq War unleashed the possibility of a Shia-Sunni regional war as the study does, is it that easy to overlook that the Iran-Iraq War actually was a regional war between the Sunni Arabs and Shia Persian Iraq? A war that led both Iran and Iraq to pursue WMD to break the long stalemate.
And you can easily point to the source of a surge of Iranian influence as being not our destruction of Saddam's regime in 2003 but the 2011 decision to get out of Iraq after defeating the battlefield threats and leave the political field to the Iranians. Without America's presence to shield Iraq and block Iran, of course a weak Iraq feared looming Iran and adjusted their policies to be more favorable. And it even made some sense to let their military hollow out by promoting officers loyal to the Iraqi leadership as a safety net against Iranian influence.
And still it took the collapse of the Iraqi military and the loss of massive amounts of territory to ISIL in 2014 to allow Iran to seriously penetrate Iraq through many of the Shia militias raised to resist ISIL.
Blocking Iran to defend the victory 2.0 is a reason I want us to stay in Iraq post-ISIL caliphate.
One problem with the Army judgment is what point do you freeze in time to judge whether it was right to invade Iraq in 2003?
Consider the Korean War. When I was growing up I would have glibly called it a draw. We held our autocratic south and the communists had the north at the end of the war, just like at the beginning.
But as the decades have passed and South Korea became a free and prosperous democracy while North Korea has sunk further into an impoverished black hole run by truly evil people, I believe we clearly won the Korean War.
Remember too, Syria was on the "winning" side as a virtual satrap of Iran which the study says won the Iraq War. How did that victory work out for Syria? Will Iran do better over time?
Are you really going to call Iran's post-Iraq War record a success?
Iran is at war on multiple fronts including another nationwide popular outburst against the religious dictatorship running the country. There was some of this popular protest in 2009 that called for fair elections and one in 1999 seeking freedom of speech. Those two were put down with force. But the latest outburst, that began at the end of 2017 and continues, specifically calls for withdrawal from foreign wars and paying more attention to economic problems at home. Protestors were, for the first time, calling for the corrupt religious rulers to be removed, killed if necessary. Some protestors call for a return of the constitutional monarchy the religious leaders replaced in the 1980s (after first promising true democracy). The popular uprising was quickly contained but not shut down and the government found that its many wars had also turned sour. Before the 2017 nationwide protests the religious rulers saw Iran on the way to some major victories in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen. That optimism turned out to be premature. The good times were supposed to begin in the wake of a July 2015 treaty that lifted the many sanctions Iran operated under. The government got a lot more money but did not apply most of it to improving the Iranian economy. Instead a lot of that cash was stolen by corrupt officials or diverted to the many foreign wars.
And what is the alternative to the war? Were we really to leave Saddam in power and think that we could have managed Saddam since 2003 successfully?
Would it really have been better to leave Nazi Germany as a counter-weight to the USSR?
Seriously, using the same logic as the Army apparently has (and I should not assume the full nuance of the set really concludes this, to be fair to the Army) you could have said that the biggest winner of World War II in Europe was the Soviet Union that pushed into central Europe to reach the Russian empire's greatest territorial expanse, military power, and global influence. Right until 1989-1991. And in the Pacific, wasn't communist China the only real winner? (Russia's Pacific victory lasted a bit until the Sino-Soviet split, the first unraveling of their World War II victory.)
Iraq is an imperfect democracy that helps us kill jihadis rather than sponsor them or invade neighbors to destabilize the region. Apparently even the Army editors and researchers overlook this fact.
We won the Iraq War and we can win more if we fight for the post-war. And this link-filled review of the Iraq War prior to President Obama's decision to initiate Iraq War 2.0 to defeat ISIL is useful.
Anyway, I do look forward to reading the Army study. But there may be an inherent problem that flows from the very length of the Army study, as Jean Paul-Sartre perceptively identified:
A victory described in detail is indistinguishable from defeat.
We'll see if the study shakes my belief that we actually did a good job of adapting to evolving threats in the war.
And we'll see if Iran is ultimately the victor of the Iraq War.
